Turn of the Century: 1900 - 1909

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Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 7 pages.
Students read a poignant excerpt from Agnes Smedley’s novel, Daughter of Earth, and use it to think and write about how schooling—their own included—teaches lessons about social class.

Teaching Activity. By Dale Weiss. 3 pages.
A teacher’s reflections about a curriculum unit on women’s rights contextualizes the history of the feminist movement within the broader struggle of people working for greater equality in the United States.

Teaching Activity. By John DeRose. 4 pages.
Analysis of textbook passages from different countries, videos and books are used to explore different perspectives about the same event in history, i.e. “Philippine-American War” vs. “War of Philippine Independence.”

Teaching Activity. By Teaching Tolerance.
Introduces students to the role of the labor movement in securing contemporary benefits such as the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, and workplace safety regulations.

Books – Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005, with a new introduction by Anthony Arnove in 2015. 784 pages.
Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details lives and facts rarely included in textbooks—an indispensable teacher and student resource.

Book – Fiction. By John Sayles. 2011. 968 pages.
Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, Sayles’ novel of historical fiction paints a picture of the late 1890s — from the racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in Cuba and the Philippines.

Film. By Sam Pollard, Catherine Allan, Douglas Blackmon and Sheila Curran Bernard. 2012. 90 min.
Reveals the interlocking forces in the South and the North that enabled “neoslavery” post-Emancipation Proclamation.